


Do You Know The Muffin Man?

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Language, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Ok, say you have feelings for someone.This is new.Usually when you have feelings they are angry feelings and not like… nice feelings.——When Rey keeps finding a different flavoured muffin on her desk each morning, she employs her insufferable desk mate, Ben Solo, to help catch out the culprit.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 188
Kudos: 813
Collections: Anniversary Fic Exchange 2020





	Do You Know The Muffin Man?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dalzo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalzo/gifts).



Ok, say you have feelings for someone.

This is new.

Usually when you have feelings they are angry feelings (like, fuck you Uncle Luke) and not like… nice feelings.

It takes you longer than it should to notice that these are nice feelings. At first you think they are annoyed feelings in all honesty.

Your deskmate is annoying. For one thing, she’s a fucking social butterfly. It’s like every two seconds, someone comes by and has something to say to her. “Hey Rey, did you watch last night’s episode of whateverthefuck?” “Hey Rey wanna go get smoothies but really stand here gossipping for nine years before we go to the smoothie place down the block?” “Hey Rey, can I unburden my soul unto you whilest I should be doing my fucking job that I get a fucking paycheck for?”

Anyway--you don’t notice them as nice feelings. Or feelings at all. People talk to her and you get annoyed, you assume, because you’re being disturbed. Open office plans are the bane of your existence. Your focus gets shattered easily, and when it gets shattered you get mad, and when you get mad sometimes furniture ends up broken (fuck you, Uncle Luke). So you think it’s just that you’re being disturbed.

And then one day you realize that it’s not that you’re being disturbed. It’s that she’s giving attention to everyone except you. Whenever you wish her good morning, she sort of grunts and says a brisk hello, and that’s it. You’d liked that for a while, until you’d realized just how much of her heart she was giving to everyone else. You wrack your brains and try to understand why this might be. It’s probably just because she hasn’t had her morning coffee, right? It’s probably not because you got into a screaming fight with her (or office screaming, since you can’t scream in the office) that one time she took your stapler without asking and put it back in the wrong place. 

But most importantly: you want her to talk to you?

That’s weird.

That’s new.

You don’t want anyone to talk to you ever. Talking usually ends up with betrayal and anger and hurt (seriously-- _ fuck _ you Uncle Luke). But you want Rey to smile at you the way she smiles at Rose, or Finn, or Jannah, or any of the rest of your insufferable team. You want her to like you. 

Because, it seems, you actually kind of like her. Even if she’s an annoyingly popular social butterfly, you, for some unfathomable and unprecedented reason, like her. You like looking at her at her computer, focused in the sunshine, you like hearing her laugh when she laughs. It hits you all the harder because it’s something that just is. There’s no inciting incident, no moment of clarity that this person matters to you, there’s the realization that she has, in her own way, always mattered to you and you were too much of a fool to have noticed it before now.

And she doesn’t seem to want to talk to you ever. Which is unsurprising because that’s always how it goes, but somehow it stings all the worse because of your realization that you like her.

Ok, worst case scenario, it’s the thing with the stapler, which means it’s probably the thing with the stapler, because if there’s one thing you’ve learned over the years, it’s that your full legal name should be Ben “Worst Case Scenario” Solo. So how the fuck do you walk that back and make her notice you?

You start paying attention.

You don’t like it--it’s more reminders that she gives her heart out to so many people but she doesn’t waste a breath on you. But you pay attention anyway. This hurts less than it could at the moment. It might start hurting a lot. Or it might not. You won’t know until you’ve tried. The worst case scenario has never really made you shy away from things--largely because no worst case scenario is worse than the ones you’ve already lived through at this point, though you suppose saying that is definitely tempting fate and this could hurt worst of all. Anyway--you start paying attention.

She drinks coffee in the morning and at two pm; she goes for smoothies once a week with Rose Tico and walks along the river with Finn to stretch her legs on days when it isn’t raining; she brings her own lunch most days, but can be tempted to go out for food when someone else wants to but--as far as you can tell--she doesn’t usually initiate these forays. And sometimes she brings a baked good back to the office and hums happily to herself whenever she takes a bite.

The humming happily does things to you, and for once you’re glad that she doesn’t ever seem to notice you because it means she doesn’t notice the way you sort of just stare at her as she’s looking down at her computer and eating a brownie, or a muffin, or cookie.

But it’s enough for you to start hatching a plan.

You’ll leave muffins on her desk in the morning. A muffin because that’s morning food, and mornings because you get to the office before anyone else and so you won’t have to worry about awkwardly presenting her with food as a way to apologize for the stapler situation. She’ll probably work out that it’s you that brought the muffins because you’re the one who always gets to the office first.

Right?

_ Wrong _ . 

Rey does not connect the dots about it, though she is clearly delighted at the appearance of a mysterious banana pecan muffin on her laptop. You hear her thanking  _ Finn _ of all people for it. At least Finn has the decency not to pretend he is “the muffin man.” 

This isn’t the worst of all things, you suppose. She enjoyed the muffin. That’s the most important part. She had done her happy food hums and smiled slightly at her computer screen that morning. 

But you also don’t register for her, just like you don’t register for your parents or your boss or anyone. 

But you also refuse to be defeated by a muffin--especially not this early in the game. 

So you try again. 

You try again and this time, when she sees the muffin she looks at you.  _ That’s it _ . 

“Do you know who left this? Did you see?”

This is your golden opportunity--the moment you say  _ Rey, I noticed you liked baked goods and I would like to apologize for the stapler thing (what stapler thing? Oh you’ve forgotten? Never mind then), and I would like us to be on better terms _ but instead you end up saying “No, I didn’t see,” like the big fucking coward idiot that you are. 

She frowns for the slightest moment before looking around the desks. The frown doesn’t last long. It dies the moment she realizes that the muffin is a blackberry currant one and the happy hums are back. She is happy. That’s the most important part.

You, on the other hand, could probably kick over a trash can in frustration right now. 

But this is a war that you will win in the long run. This is something you can do, some change you can affect. Exposure to non-stapler-misplacement behavior over time, plus the strategic use of muffins will get you what you want.

Which is a smile directed at you and not the muffin.

You would like her to smile at you and mean it, the way she smiles at other people and means it. Because if she smiles at you…

Well, it’ll mean you were able to turn something around, which you’ve never had demonstrated evidence that you can, in fact, do. And if you can turn it around so that she’ll smile at you, maybe it’ll go enough in that direction that she might want to hold your hand.

But you’re getting ahead of yourself.

You’ve always been a ridiculously impatient man. (Fuck you, Uncle Luke.) And now is not a time for impatience. Now is a time for careful application of muffins.

The next one is a blueberry poppyseed one and she looks like she’ll cry tears of joy when she eats it. “Where the hell is the muffin man getting these?” you hear her ask Finn when she goes to get her coffee. You smile to yourself. These are the best muffins she’s tasted (they should be; they come from that unbearably hipster place down the street from you, and if you’re going to spend that much money on a muffin and give it to Rey, it had better be the best muffin in the world). You are doing this right.

Except for the part where she doesn’t know that you’re the one leaving the muffins.

“You still haven’t seen anyone leave these?” she asks you when she gets back to the desk.

“I have not seen anyone,” you tell her. It is not, in fact, a lie. You haven’t seen anyone put a muffin on her desk. You have put the muffin on the desk. It’s not a lie. But it is also not the truth which you think at this stage might have yielded a genuine smile from Rey and a  _ thank you _ and maybe an attempt at conversation.

“Well, if you see anyone,” she tells you.

You nod to her. “I’ll let you know.”

(You have no intention of letting her know. Because you, a fool, have now failed to tell her the truth twice when asked which means the only thing to do is to die with this secret.)

(Except yes, you want to let her know. You want to see her smile.)

The next muffin is a lemon poppyseed one; after that it’s an orange and white chocolate one which has her positively groaning in a way that makes you glad you’re sitting down; after that you get the double dark chocolate, at which point she asks you a third time, “And you really don’t know anything about where these are coming from?”

This is a harder time to obfuscate your cowardice because you’re determined not to lie to her. “They look like they come from Hosnian Bakes.”

“Hosnian Bakes?” she asks you.

“Yeah.”

She nods slowly and then turns to google. “Yes, that has to be it,” she says, sounding excited. She looks up at you and--

\--and smiles. “Thanks Ben.”

_ Tell her the truth. _

“It’s near where I live.”

_ Put it together.  _

_ Notice me.  _

_ I’m sorry about the stapler explosion. _

And the thing is, after that, she’s warmer to you. She smiles at you when she passes you in the hallway, she asks how your day’s going when you bump into one another by the coffee machine at two pm. She has definitely noticed you, and she is definitely starting to give you the same warmth that she gives other people, even if it’s not necessarily in the same volume.

But this is a long game you are playing. And you are starting to be--dare you say it--optimistic. Because there is undeniable evidence that you have, in fact, turned things around.

(You try not to think about how you still haven’t told her the truth, and this might upset her and undo all the progress you’ve made. That is a worst case scenario and you refuse to acknowledge it lest it break you.)

You sort of think, though, that this is going to go on like this forever. You will spend a significant chunk of your paycheck getting Rey muffins that she’ll never know come from you, you will hear her happy little hums and you will know that it is because of you that she makes them. She’ll never know that. It’s a secret that will be kept between you and the bakery cashiers at Hosnian.

You try not to lose hope that she’ll work it out though. Because if there’s one thing you know about yourself, it’s that you’re not as smart as you think you are. (You try not to think that perhaps Rey is perfect for you because if she has not worked it out yet either, you’re probably about the same level of not as clever as you think you are.) But you cannot deny that it’s a little disheartening watching her eat the muffins, even if she chats with you now, and smiles at you, and asks if you want to join those sunshine river walks with Finn (who definitely is not sold on you yet).

Progress is being made, but as ever--the moment you got what you wanted, it wasn’t enough. And you are trying not to get angry, or bitter--the feelings you are far more used to. Those aren’t feelings for Rey. Those are feelings for Uncle Luke. Not for Rey. Never for Rey.

But you also know that you never get what you want; you only get what you deserve.

Which is why you can’t really believe your eyes when you get back from a run on Saturday afternoon to find Rey sitting on your stoop, eating a muffin. There’s a paper bag at her side that makes you wonder just how many muffins she’d gotten.

“Hi,” you say, trying to sound more confused than nervous.

“Hi muffin man,” she tells you and there’s a twinkle in her eye you don’t really know what to do with.

You swallow. You don’t know what to say. All you can really take in is that she’s sitting on your stoop, and she’s eating a muffin, and there’s a twinkle in her eye.

“How’d you work it out?” you ask at the same time she asks, “Why didn’t you  _ tell _ me?”

You swallow. She sighs. “There was no way you wouldn’t have seen who the muffin man was,” she says. “And then I remembered you said you lived near Hosnian and I sort of worked it out from there.”

You nod.

“Why?” she asks pointedly.

“I’m sorry about the stapler,” you say. 

She blinks. Then rolls her eyes. “This is an apology? It’s a little over the top for an apology.”

And you decide for the first time to be brave. “It’s more than an apology,” you tell her quietly and she goes still. “You like baked goods and I wanted to make you happy.” Her expressions shift so quickly it’s hard to follow them entirely. There’s a sort of confusion, then a realization, then a sort of misty-eyed  _ oh _ , where her lips are almost trembling. “You’re always so happy when you eat them.”

She’s blinking very fast now and you think she might be trying not to tear up.

“It’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” she tells you and she gets to her feet.

You are woefully ill-prepared for what comes next. It had never even constituted one of the stretch goals of this whole endeavor, but there’s Rey, standing on the tips of her toes, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

You’ve been called many things in your life, usually some variant of asshole. But you don’t think anyone’s ever called you sweet.

You swallow.

Now is a time for bravery. So you bend down and press a kiss to her lips and your heart is hammering in your chest as you do so. She might shove you away, start yelling at you, might throw your stapler out a window. 

  
She lets out another surprised little  _ oh _ , but doesn’t pull her lips away from yours. Indeed, her arms are wrapping around your neck and you feel the paper bag of muffins in her hand resting against your shoulder blades as she deepens the kiss. She’d been eating the orange and white chocolate muffin; you can taste it on her tongue still. 

This is better than you could have possibly planned, better than anything you could have possibly imagined. You could not have imagined or planned for Rey actually wanting to kiss you, but if those noises she is making are the same ones as the ones she makes when eating muffins--and you think they just might be--then she might be enjoying this very much indeed.

And you smile into her lips. Somehow, your plans never involved _you_ smiling, but here you are smiling into her lips. 

And she is humming and sighing and smiling right back.

**Author's Note:**

> when i'm not hiding from social media, you can find me [here!](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter) I commissioned some art from elopez7228 which you can find [here!](https://twitter.com/crossing_winter/status/1259287023766175745) Des also made a [lovely moodboard!!!](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks/status/1259317525638086658)


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